


may the bridges i have burned light my way back home

by orphan_account



Series: everyone deserves the flames [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Respawn, it'll happen i promise, lower caps bc i'm lazy rip the dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4615422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>now</b>.<br/>hidden in the middle of nowhere, vice city.<br/>the fake ah crew lay in wait.<br/><em>it’s not immortality</em>, sings a sweet bird.</p><p><b>sometime later</b>.<br/>the mad see truth:<br/><em>respawns fail</em>, the king decrees.</p><p><b>later</b>.<br/>a ghost is lost,<br/>a family broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	may the bridges i have burned light my way back home

“it’s not immortality,” gavin tells them once.

it is dark when he says this. michael is over at the fire pit, trying to start up a campfire for when ray and jack awake from death. ryan and geoff are the only ones who hear this, now - a few nights from now, ray will be told this. later on, sometime, michael and jack will be told, too.

but for now, it is gavin and geoff and ryan, out in the middle of nowhere, vice city. it is gavin and a too-sombre tone, geoff in a curious silence and ryan in his own sort of dubious hush.

“immortality insinuates that we never die, and we do. constantly. we’re probably more dead than we are alive, at this point – we’re not immortal. we still die.”

and indeed they do. they have been announced dead by countless coroners and many more careless criminals. they have died and still they live, a tale to be told only to scare young children into eating their greens or being kind to their elderly.

 _fear them_ , the stories will say.  _they will know if you don’t. they will find you and make you fear them_. the people of america are always too bored, their minds too privy to over exaggeration; the boys and girl of fake ah may be monsters, but in a way, they are still human. they will not hurt anyone who does not deserve it.

“what do you suggest we call it, then?”

gavin hesitates. tilts his head back and  _breathes_. the air is smoky and it smothers his lungs. he does not flinch, nor does he even blink – the ghosts of the smoke that had once killed him still linger. it is awfully hard to feel pain where sensation no longer lies.

“it’s like a video game, ‘innit?” and he is only all-too right. “like a respawn.”

* * *

it is sometime later, and all of them know of gavin’s little term; michael and ray both adopt it into their own vocabularies, and it is possible that they use gavin’s words more than they use their own. geoff never says much on the subject - either doesn’t care or doesn’t remember ( both have always been equally possible with the gent ). jack, too, tends to skirt around talking much about it. she has always focused more on the fact that they always wake up after their deaths than  _why_  such a thing happens.

ryan, then.

they are in alderney, now. it is michael, gavin and ryan, here on some job with burnie’s boys. ryan is here mostly to keep an eye on gavin: most of his trips to alderney end in a jail cell or in a coffin on its’ way back to los santos.

as is the life of a reputed hacker, ryan would suppose.

“don’t respawns fail, sometimes?”

gavin swallows. he has been waiting for this. ryan has always been good at this; when he lays in wait, he will wait as long as he feels he needs. it is what makes him dangerous. the mad mercenary has always been a patient man. too-patient, according to some.

he breathes. breathes deep, fills his lungs up to the brim. “only if the game is poorly designed.”

ryan smiles. gavin isn’t looking over at him but he can feel it; can envision the smile as it unfurls on ryan’s lips and makes him look years younger. gavin is afraid to look, almost; ryan is the most dangerous man gavin has ever known. when the man smiles, there is something terribly innocent to him - something that almost breaks down the walls gavin has so-carefully built between the two of them. when ryan smiles, gavin is reminded that not all hope is lost in their world, not yet.

there is still a spark, somewhere. sometimes, that spark can be found in the crook of ryan’s grin, or the volume of michael’s yells. he has even found it in the low timbre of ray’s sarcasm, or the love in jack’s too-fleeting touches.

( more often than not, gavin has found it in the alcohol of geoff’s breath as the two of them stray too-close, too-close. he can sometimes get drunk off of geoff’s presence without the aid of his beloved whiskey or without having to dip into his and ray’s ridiculously extensive stash of just about every narcotic ever imaginable. the man–  _geoff_  has always been too dangerous; a sun gavin has always been too afraid to near. )

“wouldn’t you say our entire existence has been poorly designed?”

ryan is still smiling.

gavin isn’t sure if he’s still breathing.

* * *

the morning after. ryan is back in los santos, leaving nothing but a note to explain his sudden disappearance. michael is yelling and the apartment is a mess. gavin is pressed into the corner of the bathroom, as small as he could possibly be.

he knows now that he is not breathing. atlas could not shoulder the weight in his chest.

_what if ryan dies what if the respawn fails what if what if–_

it turns out, he discovers later, he was worrying about the wrong person.

* * *

he gets snatched a week later, and he comes to with the sweet, cloying taste of chloroform dancing on his tongue. his head is heavy and his tongue infinitely moreso. the concrete is cool under his legs and steel harsh against his wrists.

 _michael will come for me_.

* * *

time passes, as it always does. he cannot quite tell how much has passed. he has no way of telling. it has been a while since he’s seen anyone, longer since he’s last eaten. he knows that he is on the edge of death, and he wants nothing more than to embrace it with his trembling arms only to wake up moments later in his own bed, back in los santos.

* * *

_respawns fail_ , a voice he no longer recognizes whispers in his ear.  _our entire existences have been poorly designed_. gavin free no longer exists, instead here is a ghost of a man: he is lost in a valley of broken memories and there is no one here to pull him out, not now.

he is alone.

somewhere, michael jones is tearing apart the world to find his boi - he is frenzied and panicked in his search. at night, he will cry himself to sleep because  _he_  was supposed to look after gavin. mogar has always protected vav, no matter what, and he has failed. vav is gone and has left no trace, and it is all little mogar’s fault.

somewhere, geoff ramsey has lost himself to the drink. he thinks he will find his little gavver at the bottom of a bottle, so he drinks and drinks and  _drinks_. each bottle is empty. there is an awful aching in his chest geoff cannot yet name. a voice in the back of his head tells him that it’s  _heartbreak_.

somewhere, jack pattillo is praying. it has been a while since she has seen the inside of a church. a part of her feels guilty for being here, as if her presence alone will taint the sanctity of this place. she cannot bring herself to feel sorry. the priest offers her his favor when she enters, tells her that she is welcome here. god loves all, and he is always willing to listen. jack prays to a god she no longer believes in, asks for gavin’s admittance to heaven.

(  _he’s a good kid, he would have followed us anywhere - and he did. please, please, forgive him_. )

somewhere, ryan haywood is dead. his own words swirl in his head -  _respawns fail respawns fail respawns fail_  - and hopes that he will soon wake wherever gavin has found himself. he will wake soon, on a familiar beach in a familiar city. he will weep as he remembers his promises.  _i’ll keep you safe_. he will sob as he realizes he has failed now.

somewhere, ray narvaez jr. is boarding a plane.

his destination?

they say there is a ghost, lost in london. they speak of a boy with sunkissed skin and the world in his smile. they say there is something empty in his eyes, though - something haunted. they say it is time for him to go home, beg for someone to collect the boy with voices in his head.


End file.
